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The TREC 2007 Legal Track Interactive Task Challenge involved ...

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University of Washington (UW) at Legal TREC Interactive 2007
Efthimis N. Efthimiadis and Mary A. Hotchkiss
University of Washington Information School
{efthimis, hotchma}@u.washington.edu
Introduction
The TREC 2007 Legal Track Interactive Task Challenge involved five hypothetical legal
“complaints” based on some facet of tobacco litigation. Each complaint included a request to
produce relevant documents. These document production requests were broadly worded to force
the opposing party to provide a maximum number of responsive documents during discovery.
The resources for document production were two databases containing the tobacco litigation
documents released under the terms of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between the
Attorneys General of several states and seven U.S. tobacco organizations. These two databases,
the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) and Tobacco Documents Online (TDO),
contain around 7,000,000 documents. The majority of these documents are not legal publications
like cases, statutes, or regulations; the databases include scientific studies, corporate
correspondence, periodical articles, news stories, and a mix of litigation documents.
Finding relevant documents in large databases is easier said than done. Studies have shown that
researchers tend to overestimate the effectiveness of online retrieval. In a 1985 study on retrieval
effectiveness, attorneys who were confident they had located at least 75% of the relevant
documents actually had a success rate of about 20%. (Blair and Maron, 1985). Their research
findings had a major impact in information retrieval evaluation, especially of operational systems.
In a sequel article Blair (1996) reflected on the impact of their study. Dabney (1986), Bing
(1987) and Schweighofer (1999) provide in-depth reviews of the problems of full text searching
for legal information and provide suggestions for solutions to the problems.
In the past twenty years, the functionality of full-text document-retrieval systems has improved
but more evaluation of information retrieval effectiveness is needed. Attorneys and their support
staff must recognize that effective information retrieval in today’s complex litigation requires a
variety of tools and approaches, including a combination of automated searches, sampling of
large databases, and a team-based review of these results.
Search Methodology
As part of a class exercise, six groups of MLIS students at the University of Washington
Information School were asked to search for relevant documents addressing three topics
designed for the Legal Track Interactive Task Challenge. The topics searched were:
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Topic 7: All documents discussing, referencing, or relating to company guidelines,
strategies, or internal approval for placement of tobacco products in G-rated movies;
Topic 45: All documents that refer or relate to pigeon deaths during the course of animal
studies;
Topic 51: All documents referencing or regarding lawsuits involving claims related to
memory loss.
Four of the six groups had three members; two groups had two members. The group membership
was based on level of general search experience as well as familiarity with legal documents or
litigation research. To avoid learning effects the topics were searched in different order by the
groups (see Table 1). Searchers were instructed to focus on overall recall.
Searchers were trained using the last topic from the list of the legal TREC interactive topics
(Topic 23: “All documents referencing lobbying efforts by tobacco companies against legislation
(state or federal) aimed at eliminating tobacco advertising on billboards, where the document
makes specific reference to the First Amendment.”) The six groups used both systems (LTDL
and TDO) to familiarize themselves with the search capabilities and other features available.
When appropriate, searchers created accounts in these systems to permit access to features
available only to registered users.
After the training searches were completed, the groups were directed to begin searching on the
test topics in a specified order. The order of topics to be searched by groups was:
Table 1: Search Order of Topics
Group Topics
gp1 1 2 3
gp2 2 3 1
gp3 3 1 2
gp4 1 3 2
gp5 2 1 3
gp6 3 2 1
The groups were asked to organize their search effort in the following way:
(1) For each of the two systems (LTDL, TDO):
(2) Each searcher should familiarize themselves with a topic at a time;
(3) Each searcher should develop search statements for the topic and for each system
(4) Each searcher should conduct searches in each system and record the search statements,
the number of records retrieved, and the first 20-30 records.
(5) Each group will meet to discuss each member’s search strategies, compare what was
retrieved, and decide on how to refine the search so as to conduct a final search.
(6) Then, each group will perform a final search using one or more search statements and
selecting up to 100 relevant documents in the final document pool. At this stage groups
can search together as a team using any arrangement that suits them.
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(7) Submit the final “search statement(s)” used to retrieve the docs;
(8) Submit up to 100 relevant documents per topic.
(9) Searching will be performed using the two systems (LTDL, TDO).
(10) The team submissions were by document identifiers (Bates numbers).
UW-Based Relevance Assessment
One of the authors, a member of the University of Washington law school faculty who holds an
adjunct appointment in the Information School, reviewed the search results submitted by the six
teams. This individual holds both a J.D. and an MSLS and has worked as a librarian and an
attorney. The assessor studied the “How to Guide for Assessors” (Baron, Lewis & Oard, 2006)
before reviewing the search results. She noted the guidance on relevance: a document is
“relevant” (“responsive”) if any portion of the document addresses the topic of the request.
Assessments should not rely on the title alone; an examination of the actual document is required.
Relevance should be based on the content, and not merely on specific words, phrases, or
sentences.
The problem, of course, is that relevance is a subjective, fluid determination. Relevance relates to
the information need. The Guide prescribes that relevance determinations should be binary:
relevant or irrelevant. However, in legal analysis, a more nuanced approach is appropriate.
A nuanced approach is desirable because documents sought during the discovery process may be
relevant for different purposes in litigation. For example, Topic 1 requested all documents that
refer or relate to pigeon deaths during the course of animal studies. One of the retrieved
documents (Bates number 502026540/6555), consists of sixteen pages of speaking notes from a
September 1978 address to the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science. The focus
of this address is on parasitic infections. Since no mention is made of pigeon deaths, it appears to
be irrelevant. However, this document may be relevant for purposes of identifying expert
witnesses to use during litigation. Topic 2 requested all documents referencing or regarding
lawsuits involving claims related to memory loss. One of the documents retrieved (Bates number
2074661514) is an internal memo from Michael P. Crooks. He shares insights on a trial that has
nothing to do with memory loss but is being heard by a judge who needs smoking breaks. Crooks
relates that the judge may be more supportive of the tobacco companies than a non-smoker.
Although this document isn’t responsive to Topic 2, the requesting party may be interested in
these disclosures. Another example is drawn from Topic 3 which asks for documents that relate
to company guidelines, strategies, or internal approval for placement of tobacco products in G-
rated movies. Several teams retrieved a short news article published on September 5, 1983, that
reported on the petition from the Action for Children’s Television to the FTC on banning
cigarette advertising at movie theatres with child audiences (Bates number 680400263). While
the article doesn’t document any tobacco company strategies, guidelines, or internal approval, it
may be useful for determining whether pretrial publicity justifies sequestering the jury. On the
other hand, a letter from R.J. Reynolds Senior Counsel in the marketing department to the
product placement coordinator at Walt Disney Pictures, urges Disney to delete from the script
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references to cigarettes or any cigarette brand. This document is highly relevant as proof of R.J.
Reynolds’s company guidelines. (Bates number 515849149).
While acknowledging that relevance assessments are subjective, the assessor focused on the
practical applications of each document in the litigation process and ranked the documents on a
five-part scale:
Table 2: Grades of Relevance
0.0 no relevance
0.5 marginal relevance (weak evidence)
1.0 basic relevance (moderate evidence)
1.5 strong relevance (moderate to strong evidence)
2.0 significant relevance (strongest evidence)
Documents with marginal or basic relevance were judged to have minimal utility for the
requesting party. Documents with original or scientific information or that appeared more
authoritative were judged to have a higher value to the requesting party and received the higher
scores (1.5 or 2.0). The assumption was that the core information need was for documentary
evidence that supported specific causes of action. Each assessment included a brief annotation
that supported her evaluation.
As requested in the “How to Guide for Assessors,” the assessor paid attention to limitations and
conditions in the request to produce documents. For example, Topic 2 requested the production
of “all documents referencing or related to lawsuits involving claims related to memory loss.” In
her analysis of documents retrieved for Topic 2, a higher relevance was assigned to copies of
original legal documents (complaints, petitions, full-text decisions, interrogatories, etc.) than to
derivative materials such as summaries of recent cases provided by counsel or news stories about
lawsuits. Since Topic 3 requested the production of “all documents discussing, referencing, or
relating to company guidelines, strategies, or internal approval for placement of tobacco products
in G-rated movies,” she placed a higher value on company-produced documents such as letters,
marketing memoranda, briefing books, and policy manuals than on news summaries, editorials,
or press releases.
For purposes of the TREC challenge, the five-part scale was reduced to a binary scale: relevant
or irrelevant. Relevant documents were those that received a 1.0, 1.5 or 2.0 score; irrelevant
documents received a 0.0 or 0.5 score. The UW-based relevance results and discussion will be
discussed elsewhere.
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TREC-Based Relevance Results:
The results as scored based on the legal track method are presented in Figure 1. From these results we
can see that UW6, a group of first year MLIS students without any legal training, outperformed the other
groups. How does this holds vis-a-vis the UW-based results? Further analysis of the data will tell.
Figure 1: TREC-based relevance results per group
75
Mean [Rel - (Non_rel / 2)] : Topics 45, 51, 7
50
25
0
UW6 UW2 UW1 UW3 UW5 UW4
Initial Observations:
The Legal Track Interactive project presented a range of challenges, both intellectual and
technical. First, the content of the two databases used for this project (LTDL and TDO)
presented significant technical challenge. Both databases had multiple duplicates of documents.
Different copies of the same document would be stamped with different Bates numbers.
Sometimes there would be as many as a dozen identical documents with a dozen unique Bates
numbers. In part, this is a normal function of litigation. When responding to a request for a
document, the responder is obligated to hand over all responsive documents. The responder may
have the original version, an edited version, a version that has circulated and been annotated by
multiple readers, and a signed version. All of these versions are responsive to the request and
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each “copy” might be used differently as evidence in litigation. Another possibility is that
multiple copies were distributed internally and the request captures each of these separate copies,
either centrally (in a company archive) or in individual collections. Still another possibility is
that different parties may have copies of the same documents. For example, the American
Tobacco Company and Brown & Williamson may have copies of the same scientific study or
Congressional hearing. The requesting party will want to differentiate the copies from multiple
sources and will assign a different Bates number to these copies even though the contents of the
copies are the same.
Second, other technical challenges included the uneven optical quality of the scanned material
and the slow response time when retrieving specific documents by Bates numbers. The slow
response was frustrating, especially when a long wait was rewarded only with an almost illegible
document.
Third, the fundamental vagueness of the request presented an intellectual challenge. Attorneys
understand that requests are broadly worded to force the opposing party to provide a maximum
number of responsive documents during discovery. The broad wording, however, increases the
challenge of determining relevance. The assessment process required the review of documents as
varied as invitations to forums, bibliographies, appendix material, scientific studies, marketing
memorandum, commercial digests of cases, petitions, depositions, progress reports, etc.
Initial Conclusions:
First, the vague, open-ended nature of discovery presents challenges to both the requesting party
and the responding party. Although the requesting party has an objective (“the smoking gun”),
designing a production request that identifies all responsive documents is difficult. Similarly, the
responding party must respond to a vague request while solving the mechanical difficulties of
document retrieval from increasingly complex, large data sets. These vague requests are ironic
given the training received during law school to focus on the “call of the question” on exams.
Future lawyers are counseled that a well-drafted question will be direct, concise, and
unambiguous so as to elicit a specific response. While effective discovery requires a certain
amount of vagueness, in later stages of litigation such as direct and cross-examination, there’s a
premium on specific, focused questions.
Second, legal training may not be all that critical to developing effective search queries. Legal
training is critical however to assessing relevance for use in a legal proceeding – and for
recognizing legal documents in the database such as pleadings, motions, petitions, etc.
Finally, studies analyzing the effectiveness of full-text information retrieval need to continue.
While today’s searchers are more sophisticated, searchers still overestimate the effectiveness of
online retrieval.
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